Memento Mori
by Op-op Po-po
Summary: "He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."- Friedrich Nietzsche. When Homura runs away one night, Madoka decides to go bring her back.
1. 10

She told me that the stars were dead. What we saw stretched out above our heads was a burial shroud, soft, velvet, large enough so that the whole universe could share. The lights twinkling, juxtaposing its darkness, were just corpses that didn't know they were dead yet, pretending to still breath and live.

"Are you still awake?"

I turned my head to the left, bringing myself face to face with her. The tips of our nose grazed each other. "What?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "Just making sure you're still awake." I turned my face back up to the sky. Silhouettes of tree branches shattered its smooth, glassy appearance by fuzzing up the edges, like a phone screen with a spider web of cracks surrounding it. "Would you be upset if I went away?"

These things are ghost stars. If a star four light years away went super nova then no one would know until four years later.

"Huh?"

"There's a resistance, hiding outside of the city, called Rebellion. I want to join."

"Why?"

"Because something is wrong and I want to help fix it."

"What's wrong?"

Silence.

"Tell me, what's so bad in this city that you have to leave it? If something so horrible exists, I want to go with you. I want to help."

"Go home and grab bags of supplies. Anything you think we might need."

I should have known. Looking back at her, framed and cocooned in shades of gray from concrete and cement, the only splash of color coming from the bright red ribbon tied around her throat, tight as a noose and dark as blood in the shadows, she stared forward, not even glancing sideways at me. I left her there, waiting. When I came back, weighted down with two bulging bags, she was gone. Just like I knew she would be. I just wanted to help.

XoX

I am in my room, curled up in the covers on my bed. The lights are off. Thin headphone wires connect into a triangle underneath my chin, making a small knot that tickles my adam's apple. The cord under the knot loosely tumbles towards a small, antique radio. The radio's red eye glows in the dark, blinking as the radio stutters.

"Beware of young girls dressed in odd clothes," the radio's voice warns. It speaks behind a wall of static. "These prepubescent females have been likened to superheros with their costume-like clothes, unusual weapons, and powers. They refer to themselves as 'magical girls.' The only way to individually identify them is by their unnatural hair/eye color and their costume, seeing as they never change clothes. The rest of their features, for the most part, are neutral and nondescript. "

A knock on the door. The radio spits out static as the walls vibrate and send it shuffling on the dresser. "Madoka, Madoka! Can you hear me?" My mother shouts at the door, her voice slipping through the pores in the wall and coming out strained, thin, and muffled on the other side. "Dinner's almost ready. Please come down and eat with the family, dear. I know you're sad because you miss your friend, but you won't help her by hiding in your room. Madoka?"

The radio says "Special news bulletin." The radio's voice gargles and stutters in time with each knock, punching emphasis with each punch from mother's fists. "The worst crime you can commit is in your own head. Stay away from the Rebellion. If you know someone in this illegal cult you are susceptible to guilt by association. And remember, that someone you know is no longer who you think they are."

"Madoka?"

And pressing my fingers into my ears to push the earbuds so snug that I can't hear over the rush of blood, I feel my lips move, forming the words "Be there in a minute mom." Then, almost as an afterthought, "May I go out tonight after dinner?"

The door opens and my mom peeks through the crack. The sudden brightness burns my eyes. "What," she says. There's a slight lilt at the end of the word but it's not a question.

"You're right," I say, trying to smile, trying to giggle, but they both come out nervous instead of light and airy. I yank the end of the cord and both earbuds come out with a pop. They swing, knocking against each other. A ball of earwax sticks to the rim of one of them. "I haven't been out in a long time. I should get some fresh air. I promise to be back before dark."

My mother stands in the doorway, afraid to cross over. Afraid of me. Afraid for me. "Alright," she agrees. "Hurry up and come down." She closes the door behind her. The dark soothes my eyes. I pick the wax off of the earbud and roll it between my thumb and forefinger. Rolling until it looses its stick. Until the amber turns black. Then I let it drop to the floor.


	2. 9

I last saw Homura at the bus stop. We sat next to each other, so close that our legs pressed against each other. The spaces between the wooden planks on the the bench pinched our butts and thighs. Splinters snagged our pleated skirts and her tights. Our weight made the bench sag and creak. Homura leaned against the handrail, looking pale and weak. I could make out thin, blue veins under her skin like rivers. She didn't look at me. Her head tilted away from me and her eyes switched between watching the ants creep up the legs of the bench and the sky.

I sit in her spot, leaning my weight against the handrail, titling my head the same way she had. My bangs fall into my eyes, their sharp tips stabbing my eyelids. I wrap my fingers around the handrail. The metal burns. I hold on so tight my fingertips turn white. Ants skirt around my hands, the fading sunlight glinting off their shiny black armor. "Homura, what do you think I should do?" I ask her ghost.

"Who are you talking to?"

I flinch. A sliver of wood scratches the underside of my thigh before burying into the skin. I lift up my leg and tug at the splinter, wincing as it pulls out. "No one." My eyes flick up to meet whoever had spoken. No one was there. Soft giggles puff against my ear, wet and heavy.

"Hey," hot air hisses against my neck. "You want to find her?" A crick shoots through the muscles in my neck, stiffening it to where it won't turn. I don't want to twist my body because I can feel her, so close the heat of her body presses against my skin.

"Who?"

"The girl you were talking to."

"What girl? No one's here."

Another giggle. "I know how you can help her."

I inhale, turning in time with the movement, brushing against the fabric of her clothes. We are so close the tips of our noses brush against each other in a mock eskimo kiss. This close all I can make out are her eyes, huge, unnatural, framed with fake lashes, surrounded by skin covered with so much makeup that it's chunky with clotted foundation. I pull back, pressing my back against the handrail. It's edge digs into my skin, wedging between the vertebra of my spine. The corners of her mouth twitch, trying to widen her grin but jumping back when the muscles of her face complain. Her teeth are gray, and slimy with saliva. "So you want me to tell you how you can save her?"

"How?" I croak. My heart pounds in my ears and my cheeks feel warm.

Her lips curl back from her teeth, revealing pink gums. "Have you heard of magical girls?" The tip of her tongue darts out to swipe the slime off of her teeth. Her tongue is black and fat, like an eel.

"Of course," I say. "Everyone's heard of magical girls."

"How would you feel about becoming one?"

"What?"

"I can tell you how," she giggles, her voice breathy and her eyes shining with excitement. She leans in closer to me, so close I can feel her eyelashes brush against my cheek. Thin streaks of mascara smear onto my skin, like the scratch marks from a small animal. "Would you like to know?" she whispers against my face.

I back away until I'm sitting on top of the handrail. Cold air slaps my face once I'm away from her. "How w-would you know?" I stutter, rubbing the side of my face she was pressed against, trying to rub her off of me. "Are you a magical girl?"

Suddenly something slams into my chest, making a loud, hollow thunk with impact. I land on my back against the ground. The air rushes out of my lungs in one big oof. "I am not," the girl says. Her arms are still raised in front of her, parallel to the ground, and her hands flexed. She's smiling down at me.

"How?" I wheeze.

"Hmmm?"

"How do I become a magical girl?"

She leans over the rail. Her hair shadows her face. "Meet me here tomorrow. I'll bring my sisters. We'll take you." She reaches down and grabs my wrists, pulling me up to my feet. Her hands are small, baby-like, and the skin is hard, cracked. The girl slips off the bench.

"Who are you?"

"Me and my sisters, we're the Clara Dolls and Homura's best interests are our best interests too. So please, do show, Madoka."

Before I could say another word she was gone.


	3. 8

Hitomi and Sayaka are both talking and I'm a wall in-between them so they both shout over me and around me to be heard. "Remember when people used to dye their hair all the time?" Hitomi yells, tugging at a lock of her own hair. "Any color they wanted."`

"I know someone who says they've seen a magical girl once," bellows Sayaka. "Up close and personal."

"Are you going to the music recital next week?" screeches Hitomi.

"Can you believe how much homework we got last night?" howls Sayaka.

And I say "Sayaka can I ask you a favor?" but really I whisper it. "Can I spend the night at your house?"

"Sure," she says. "When?"

"Tonight." I slow down, dropping behind the two them, crumbling their wall. They fill the gap I left by stepping closer together. Now they're the wall in front of me. I watch the way Sayaka's uniform bunches up and folds around her shoulders before smoothing out where her backs dips into a smaller size. Hitomi's hair hides her back but I can still see the crinkles around her hips. They both seem so tall. Even when they pull ahead of me walking faster and farther away, I'm the one who shrinks.

Sayaka tilts her head, looking back at me. Her eyebrows are furrowed, the wrinkles between them making her face heavy and old, but then they relax and she smiles at me. "Hurry up, Madoka. You don't want to be late."

"Oh, yes. Sorry." I run to catch up with them. Sayaka laughs at me. Her laugh is loud and unapologetic.

"That's alright," she says. "We have plenty of time before class starts." She pushes through the school doors. At first it looks like she's pantomiming a swimming motion in the air, but then the light catches on the swinging doors, prisming through the thick glass. "After you." She motions for me and Hitomi to go through.

"Do I have time to go to the bathroom?" I ask. Sayaka examines a clock floating against the wall.

"Yes," she answers. "Wait up. I need to go too. I'll come with you."

XoX

My skirt and panties hang around my ankles. I flex my feet and lift my legs up a bit, trying to keep the fabric from touching the tile. In the next stall, Sayaka lets her skirt lay against the floor, covering her shoes. She's wearing blue panties. "So Madoka," she says over the hiss of pee. "Are we going to stop by your house to pick up some stuff or are you going to ask your mom to bring your stuff by later?"

"If it's not any trouble can we stop by my house?" I ask. Sayaka's legs straighten up in the next stall. She drags her skirt and panties up her legs in one motion. The fabric rustles against her skin as she fixes herself.

"Sure," she says, raising her voice to be heard over the gurgling toilet as she flushes. The stall door creaks, her shoes walk off, a splash of water from the sinks.

"Are we here alone?"

The sink turns off. The paper towel machine squeaks as she turns the knob to make it unravel a long, brown tongue. "Yes."

"I'm not really going to stay at you house."

Ripping then crumpling. She says nothing.

"I think I know how I can save Homura," I continue. "And I don't know how long it will take so cover for me tonight, please?"

"Of course." Phish, the sound of a paper ball towel bouncing into the trash. "You haven't wanted to see anyone since _she_ disappeared. Of course you would go out of your way for _her_. I knew it was too good to be true. I should've known that Madoka doesn't care for anyone but herself and her girlfriend." There's no real heat or bite to her words. She's saying them because she needs them out, needs me to understand.

"That's not true!" I shout, but what part of her sentence is untrue I'm not quite sure. My words echo off the tile and jump back to me, slamming into my ears. "Not true, not true, not true!" The creak of a door opening, deeper and more like a growl than the stall doors. "You can come with me tonight." The door slams shut and I think I am alone.

"Alright, but afterwards you owe me a real sleep over." The door opens and closes again and this time I really am all alone.


	4. 7

There's fourteen girls squeezed onto the bench. They sit on each other's laps, two balance on the handrails, and one is in the dirt with her leg's stretched out in front of her, toes pointed. As if they were marionettes connected to the same string, their heads turn towards us at the same time. They move with slow, jerky movements. Eyes dart between me and Sayaka. "I hope its okay that I brought a friend," I say.

They turn back to the road. "The bus will be here in a minute," one of them says.

"Buses don't run this late," Sayaka whispers to me, leaning in close enough that her breath tickles my ear. Even as she speaks, watery lights shine over the street, two cones formed from headlights of a big, red bus. The Clara Dolls silently watch it approach. They lean forward slightly as if drawn to it. It stops, rocking back onto its haunches.

"Get on," they order. Sayaka moves first. She presses one hand flat against the bus door. It doesn't open. I step up next to her. The door swings open when I get close, brushing against our cheeks. The Clara Dolls watch us with their wide, bulging eye, batting their plastic eyelashes. I reach up, grab the metal hand rail, and pull myself up the stairs. My toes knock against the last step, tripping me. I land on my knees.

"Are you okay?" Sayaka asks. She goes around me, pausing in front of where I'm genuflecting like a man proposing to hold out her hand. I take it. Her hand is dry and warm. She pulls me up to my feet.

"Yeah." I brush the black flecks from the bus off of my knees. "Thank you."

Sayaka grins. "No problem." She reaches out to wipe off a spot I missed. Her gesture is rough. Behind us, the Clara Dolls crawl in, scurrying past us and filling in the front seats of the bus. The doors close on the last one as she hops up the steps. She tugs forward, like a dog struggling against its leash, until shooting free. A piece of black fabric hangs jammed between the door and wall. As she she walks past, I can she a flash of skin from the back of her thigh. "Let's sit in the back Madoka," Sayaka exclaims loudly. "Everyone knows that that's the fun part to sit in anyway."

"And," she adds, speaking lower so that only I can hear her. "It's away from _them_." We rush down the aisle like two brides who can't wait to kiss their groom, sitting in the last two benches on the bus. They're so small that only one of us fits on each of them. The bench let's out of puff of air when I plop down on it that makes the hem of my skirt flutter.

The bus is black with darkness while outside the window everything seems gray. Streetlights throw yellow through the windows. When this happens I can make out the tops of the Clara Doll's heads over the back of the benches, round like tombstones, and Sayaka's face resting against the window, her cheek flattened against the glass and her eye forced shut by the excess skin doughing over it. Her open eye is pointed down. I listen to the Clara Dolls inhale wheezing and exhale giggling over the soft puffing of my own breath. "I'm sorry," I whisper, hoping Sayaka can hear me. Hoping that she's awake. "This wasn't a good idea."

We pass a streetlight and I can see that she's picking at a piece of tape on the back of the bench with her fingernails. When the light goes out, I can still make out her hunched over silhouette and hear the click of her nails. "No," Sayaka finally agrees. "It wasn't." Past another streetlight and I can see a corner of the tape pinched between her thumb and forefinger. I hear the rip after the light goes out. "We made our decisions, so we'll just have to live with them." I hear her plucking the foam out from the hole in the bench's grey skin. A streetlight goes by. She's squeezing a ball of pale yellow foam dotted with white pellets in her hand. When she let's go, it expands back to the size it was before. She starts picking out the pellets and dropping them. They roll underneath the Clara Dolls' shoes.

The sun is up now so I can watch all of this happen with no problem.

"Here," one of the Clara girls says. They all turn back to look at us, big, round heads on stick necks, eyes glowing like lamplights. Inhuman. "Here," they all chorus. Sayaka stands up, letting the foam ball drop from her hand and bounce off of her shoe. They watch it, heads rolling in a similar motion. She walks down the aisle. Her shoes click with each step. I get up and follow her. My own shoes stick to the ground and tear when I pull them up. The Dolls don't move from their seats as we pass. "We'll wait for you here," they purr. "We'll keep your seats warm, the meter running." They smile behind us as we exit. The doors close, the engine stops, and the bus settles.

We get a minute to see what's in front of us before the cones spinning out of the headlights shut off, leaving us in greasy, murky lighting, but we can still hear the whispers and shuffling coming from the silhouettes of girls standing in a ring. Sayaka grabs my hand. I tighten my fingers around hers. "Let's go."


	5. 6

They are decaying. Faces burnt off, limbs sagging in their joints, bones poking out of melted, malleable skin. The girls in this circle are mannequins. They don't move, don't speak, but I can still hear the whispering, the shuffling, the breathing. There's a spot in their circle big enough for both of us to stand in. Sayaka heads for it. "Don't," I plead. Staring at that spot makes me cold, a fizzy, static cold that emits from my bones and tingles around inside of me.

"Do you, or don't you want to be a magical girl?" Sayaka demands, tugging me forward. Her voice is raised, as if she didn't realize that this place demanded hushed voices and quiet feet. The dummy's heads are pointed at us. They weren't before. Sayaka stops when she notices them. My bowls feel hot and loose, compared to my muscle which are cold and tight. "Hey, were they like that before?" And then someone's screaming.

I look at Sayaka, her mouth is closed. I touch my face, my throat. My own lips are sealed and I don't feel any vibrations underneath my skin. "It's coming from the circle," and the words are barely out of my mouth before Sayaka is ripping my arm out of its socket, racing forward, kicking up tuffs of grass and dirt under her heels.

We are running and I realize that the circle is further away than we thought. We are running and underneath our feet the ground turns from mud to dirt as if we are packing it tighter, making the ground harder and harder with each pound of our feet. We are running and the circle isn't getting any bigger. If anything it's smaller. Sweat runs down our faces, dampening the hair on the back of our necks. It's getting more difficult to breath. Our windpipes feel swollen and the air is thin, whistling down our throats like liquid in a straw. Spitting it up is just as hard, pushing air through our nose by slamming our chests back hard against our lungs. Our hearts pound and scream in our ears. We are running.

We slam into one of the mannequins, knocking her head off, jostling the limbs out of their sockets. She clangs against the ground with a hollow thud. Her hair turns brown and sticky with muck. Her head rolls so that her face is towards us. One eye is missing. "Where are we?" I ask. I reach down to pick up her head. As soon as my fingers nudge against her, bugs start crawling out of her holes, dropping out of her nostrils, trailing out of her ears, slipping between her lips, and a fat, slimy worm peeks his head out of her missing eye.

"Look, the bus," Sayaka says. The bus is a red speck in the distance, smaller than it should be. The headlights click on. The twin cones stretch out in from of it, pale and translucent in the glow of dawn. Then, the bus stands up on its wheels and rolls away. "Hey!" Sayaka yells. "They're leaving us! What are they doing? They can't do that!" Only, a part of me expected this to happen.

I turn away from the escaping bus and the screaming Sayaka to discover that we were wrong. The mannequins weren't in a circle but staggered around without a pattern. The whispers had stopped, if they had ever really been there.

Sayaka kicks the bug-infested head. It rolls off across the ground, sprinkling gnats and maggots onto the dirt and into the patches of dead grass. A few shiny, black bugs crawl over Sayaka's shoes. "Gross," she complains. She beats the tops of her feet against the ground.

Something rattles behind us. We turn. Peeking between the rust-stained legs of an armless mannequin, is a cat. It blinks at us, red eyes gleaming. "Greetings," it purrs. "Did you come to visit me?"

My breath hitches. A talking animal?

"What?" Sayaka asks.

The cat creeps out from between the legs and slowly pads forward. Its tail swishes like a pendulum behind it. "That is to say, would you like to be magical girls?" it explains. "That's the only reason I get visitors." It tilts it's head so that its cheek presses against its shoulder. "And that's the only reason I accept visitors." It yawns showing red-black gums, a small, neat tongue, and sharp teeth. "So, are you going to make a contract with me?"

And for a moment this almost seems familiar. "In exchange for a wish?" I ask.

"What a silly thing to ask, Madoka," the cat mews. "What do you mean in exchange for a wish? You already got your wish." Swish, swish goes its tail behind it. A pendulum counting down.


	6. 5

"Give me your souls."

"What?" My head is tilted down so far that my chin stabs between my collarbone so that I can watch the cat. It wraps its fluffy tail around into a mock cushion, sitting on top of it while grooming its face. A pink tongue laps daintily at its paws. The paws swipe at its face.

"Your _soul." _It repeats. "Souls are too frail. I'll harden it into a rock so that you'll be invincible and powerful until someone breaks it."

"No," I say, but next to me Sayaka bends down, hefting up the broken fragment of a mannequin. It's an arm, the elbow slightly bent. A ring with a large, red stone rattles loosely on a plastic finger. "What are you doing Sayaka?" and my voice is a hiss of breath between my teeth, brushing hot and moist against my chapped lips. I doubt she hears me.

But she does. "I'm going to be a magical girl." Then she's swinging the arm at her chest. The fingers stab her, digging into the skin. She uses the cupped hand as a scoop and handful after handful of her ripped clothes, soaked and heavy with blood, and flesh slip out of the fake hand. The white porcelain stains black. Gore is buried underneath its nails. She flips it and batters her ribs with the shoulder. Crack, crack, crack. The bones break, one by one, two by two. She's breathing ragged, harsh. The arm slips out of her hands and lands with a wet thunk at her feet. A whimper can be heard punctuating each in, out pull from her lungs. She reaches in and pulls her ribs apart, exposing her insides. Her soul nestles between her lungs, hovering near her heart, curled around each gut and vein.

The cat shoves one paw inside. It hooks a claw on her soul and pulls it out. It screams while being ripped apart, a high-pitched hiss that fluctuates between having a voice and just being a whoosh of air. The cat's paw curls into a human like fist around Sayaka's soul. When it lets go, a blue crystal falls out.

"There," the cat says. "Not so bad, see?" Sayaka collapses next to me, landing on her belly. Her body squelches against the ground. "Your turn Madoka."

"No-o-o," I moan, watching the blood crawl out from underneath Sayaka. It soaks into the edges of her uniform and the tips of her hair. The cat's tail snaps like a whip.

"I see," it purrs, cocking its head as if it didn't understand at all. "But don't you want to save your friend? Wouldn't you like to be strong, for once in your life?"

"Save my friend?" I ask. "Save my friend? How can I save my friend when you just killed her?" I kneel down next to Sayaka. My knees sink into her blood.

"I'm not talking about her," the cat says. "Who cares about her? I mean _Homura_."

"What's the point in saving one friend if I loose another? I can't trade someone's life for someone else's. Human lives are not monetary, you don't just trade them in for something bigger and better! Bring her back!"

"She's a magical girl," the cat says. "Isn't that what you came here to do? Didn't you want to be a magical girl so that you could save Homura? It's not my fault, what happened to Sayaka. No one told you to bring her along. But you did. "

I reach out one hand, wanting to touch her, not wanting to touch her. My face burns. "I'm so sorry," I whisper. My hand brushes against the roots of her hair. It is dry and sticks to the sweat on my skin.

Fur is tickling my skin, rubbing against my neck and chin. It's too hot, the fur on my face, making it hard to breath as it sucks up my nose and into my mouth. The cat stares up at me. Its eyes are glass marbles. "I didn't want to do it this way, it hurts more this way but you deserve it. You'll see, no more worrying about foolish human things. All your memories gone, no longer there to haunt you. Everything mortal about you turned into a hunk of jewelry. It will be better that way. It has to better that way, right?" All the while, there's an increasing pressure on my chest. I can't breath. Then pop. My chest compresses. I'm fainting, everything is becoming dark, turning into gray silhouettes that swirl and mix into black. My face hits the puddle of blood, making a splash. I breath the liquid in and drown in it. Everything fades.

XoX

I wake up. Where am I? Who am I? Where do I go from here?


	7. 4

People are whispering. People are always whispering.

"Look there she goes."

"A magical girl."

"What's she doing?"

"Who knows what they do."

" Who cares?"

" Mommy, mommy look!"

" Honey stay away."

"You. Hey, you!" someone is yelling, their voice roaring above the the whispers that hiss like the static on a television. The sidewalk and streets are crowded. I'm the only one who's shoulders aren't brushing against someone else, the only one who doesn't bounce like a pinball from body to body. Cars sit, unmoving next to us. The hot metal doesn't flinch away from me when I brush against it. "Are you even listening to me?" the voice carries over everyone's heads. They don't even look up or around. Everyone is walking in the same direction. They are water droplets in a river, sweeping everything along in their current. I walk the opposite direction, because I am allowed.

The crowd thins out the farther I go. Cars start trickling along. "Sheesh, are you deaf or something?" And suddenly I'm alone. The faded gray pavement on the road is visible now and the only thing tumbling down the street are pieces of litter that dance with the wind. But really that's not true. Wind blows my hair into my face, obscuring my vision, while blowing her hair away from her face. Red. Her hair is red, matching her eyes.

"Are you talking to me?" I ask.

"Who else?" she slurs around a mouthful of food in her mouth. Her cheek bulges, stretching out the skin until its smooth and hiding the point of her cheekbone. She rolls an apple in her hands like a pitcher feeling for the bumps and ridges in a baseball.

"What do you want?"

"What do _you_ want? I'm here for you."

I bring one hand up and grab the crystal at my throat. I feel a twinge spark in my chest and send tingles through my body that end up buzzing in my finger tips. My left arm goes numb."I'm strong. This is a strong body but its not mine is it?" I say.

"No, it's not. Neither is mine. I suppose whatever we were before traded everything for these…suits." She pauses, even her hands still. The apple gleams from between her hands, polished like a stone from all her worrying on it. "Was it worth it? Our bodies, our memories, our names, everything about who we were?"

"It has to be," I say. I reach out to put my hand over hers, to stop her from nervously rolling the apple again. She jerks away, dropping the apple. It splats against the ground, rotten. A fat, purple worm sticks its head out of the pulp, lazily swinging its head around.

"Would you like to join the Rebellion?" she offers. "I can get you in."

"Rebellion?"

Without waiting for me to answer, she pivots on her her heels and walks off, her hair swinging behind her. I run after her. My shoe squelches in the apple corpse, squeezing black blood out of the worm. "Yes, Rebellion. The answers you are looking for are there." She angles her head so I can glimpse the side of her face. "Just don't complain when you don't like what you hear." The corners of her mouth pull down. "I didn't."


	8. 3

The Rebellion is outside of the city. I've never been outside of the city. There's green and brown. The ground isn't always hard, in some places its like mush. And its quiet, but not silent. There's chatter, chirping, and rustling, but underneath that is breathing. I'd never noticed before but underneath all the noise there's breathing.

But now I'm all alone. I watched the red ponytail swish like a horse's tail in front of me, the edges of it highlighted gold, until movement in the trees startled me. I twisted my head back. Birds flitted from brach to branch, sometimes leaping out and expanding their wings to glide across the air. When they flew, they looked like moving holes in the sky. "Stop watching the birds," she said. "Look at the sky." But the bright blue was painful to look at and the sun seemed swollen, too big, unavoidable to look at. I looked down at my shoes, blinking the blue burn marks out of my eyes. When I looked back up the swinging ponytail was gone.

I stop. "Hello?" I ask. "Where'd you go?" A leaf drifts down from the trees and lands in my hair.

"Hey you, what are you doing here? Don't you know that you're nearing off limits?" The voice is firm, commanding but quiet. I turn towards the direction it came from. A girl is standing there, her back so straight that it is painful to look at.

"No," I say. She brushes a hand through my hair, letting her finger tips gently graze against my scalp, sending tingles down my spine, then plucking the leaf out of my hair. She twists the leaf between her fingers.

"I know you," she says, not looking at me but the leaf pinched in her fingernails. "You're my sister."

"What?" I start laughing. "No, you're not. I don't have a sister."

"Of course I am. I knew it as soon as I saw you, even though you look different, but I suppose that's just because you're a magical girl now. How did you do that?" She pinches too tight and the stem gets cut in half. The leaf falls to the ground. She's left holding a stick.

"Do what?"

"Become a magical girl."

"What? I've always…I woke up… I…." I don't know how to respond. Neither of us is looking at each other, both our heads are pointed down, staring at the leaf.

"That's alright. I missed you. I still do even now, it feels as though I'll never get you back." She smiles at me, meeting my eyes for the first time. I can't see past her eyelashes. "Madoka."

I flinch. "I have to go."

"No." Her voice is loud now, booming, echoing. From the trees, the birds take flight. Their wings sound like rustling paper, as if we were in a library listening to people turn the pages in their books instead of in the woods watching a black cloud rise from the branches, dropping white poop and feathers on our heads. She grabs my arm. Her fingers curl around my bicep, clamping down tight.

"Let go," and suddenly, I'm scared of her.

"Stay."

"Let go!"

"I said stay. You want to know more about who you are? I can show you."

"You can?" No, I'm scared _for_ her.

"Yes, come on." And she's dragging me. The heels of my shoes are leaving tracks in the dirt.

"But, I came here to find the Rebellion."

"I think finding yourself is more important," she says. I allow her to lead me, dragging me out of the forest and back to the city.

"Did you happen to see a red head?" I ask.


	9. 2

There's a blonde magical girl leaning against a streetlight. Her hair curls into two fat ringlets that frame her face like twisted curtains. She's our welcome sign back into city limits. My sister slows down next to me. Slower and slower until she's stopped. The blonde notices. She smiles and shakes her head, making her coils bounce, before gesturing for us to keep coming.

"Who's that?" I ask.

"Mami." Then after a pause, "The red head was Kyoko."

"What does she want?"

"How should I know?" But I can tell, she does know. "Probably the same thing as Kyoko. 'Come to the Rebellion, everything you need to know is there.' But let me know Madoka, who's more important? Me or them?"

"Herself," Mami says. The only thing that moves are her lips. The pole rests between her shoulders, bunching up the fabric of her shirt and pulling it tighter across her chest. "Isn't that why you came back here? To find yourself? Isn't that what you were promised?"

"What?" I ask, stepping away from my sister. Mami quietly regards me. A white cat peeks its head out from between her ankles, its long, fluffy tail twitching behind it in sharp jerks.

Mami's face softens. "I'm sorry Madoka, this has gone on too long." I'm watching the cat twine around her legs. "Magical girls, they just weren't meant to exist. I mean, did you hear the news?" I shake my head, not looking at her, watching the cat. "Some blue haired magical girl went rouge, killed two men on a bus. That's why they don't trust us. No one trusts us, not even ourselves. We're born killers with no prey so we eat and eat and eat whatever we can wrap our jaws around." Her expression hasn't changed this whole time, still soft, smiling. "And one day everything will be gone, nothing left to devour, so we will turn around and eat ourselves."

The streetlight turns on above her, turning her yellow hair into threads of gold and washing out her skin. Crow feet spiderweb out from the corners of her downturned eyes. Sad, old eyes.

She pushes off the pole. The cat backs away from her, backing down onto its haunches. Mami advances on me slowly. Her shoes click against the ground and echo on the pavement and cement, the only sound in the whole city at the moment. "We don't deserve to exist," she whispers, almost talking to herself. She raises her arm and rests her fingertips on my soul. I feel cold. "I'm sorry."

And she's crying and I'm crying and I know what's coming next. "Please don't," I plead. Next to me someone screams. Mami squeezes, crushing my soul between her fingers. I hear the cracking, splintering and then I shatter.

Someone slams a fishbowl over my head. Every sound is muffled and garbled and my vision is blurry, wavery. I hear people talking but they're speaking in another language. Things are fading. I'm falling. My back hits the ground, but its a dull pain, a hollow thunk. Three faces lean over me, two round and surrounded by a blob of fluff partially obscuring them and one angular with headlights sunken into is skull. Violet, gold, and red stars blinking down at me and winking out of existence one by one. The red are the last to fade. Everything is black.

XoX

"Where am I? What happened?" My head is too heavy to pick up. It throbs, pounding to the beat of my pulse. Instead, I bring my hand to my face. Sticking out of my palm are shards of red glass. Little droplets of blood worm their way around the glass and drip onto my face. They burn where they touch. I move my hand, grazing my chest where more glass quills bristle above my heart, and above me are fuzzy figures that gradually shift into focus.

Mami, Homura, and…that cat. Homura is crying. Her face is scrunched up into ugly folds of wrinkles and turning red. Her tears rain onto my face, cool, washing off the blood. Mami is looking at her own palm. Her splinters of red are longer and more wicked looking then mine. The blood runs between her fingers and stain her nails like cheap, clotted nail polish.

"You're still alive?" She talks to her hand. "How is that possible? No one's ever-" she swallows her words in an audible gulp and yellow glass explodes on her head. It digs into her cheek, snags in her hair, and tumbles to the ground. The pieces sparkle like glitter.

All I can think as Homura murders this stranger in front of me is "Pretty." Homura's grasping a stick in her hand so tight her knuckles are white. The leafy end of it is still poking the top of Mami's head, tangled into her fading blond hair, frozen after the swing. Homura lifts it away. As if a string had been disconnected, Mami collapses. Only its not Mami anymore. Its some stranger in a school uniform.

Homura is hugging me. "Its okay, its okay" she goes over and over again. A scratched record repeating itself. "No need to cry," she soothes. I hadn't even realized that I had been. "Its okay."

"No, it's not," I'm saying, after every okay. A record just as broken as her. "No, it won't be." I push her away. "I have to go see the Rebellion, Homura."

"No," she moans. "No, please don't." She's grabbing at me, pulling on my clothes, my hair, my skin. "If you do that, you won't be real anymore."

"What are you talking about?" I slap at her hands but they dance away from my attacks and continue their frantic searching.

"Madoka, this will ruin everything. I just want to keep you safe. After you find out the truth, you won't be happy. And then you'll become someone else and forget about us. You'll replace us with others. Then, when that happens you'll make the same mistakes. I just want to break that cycle while I still can. Please, Ma-"

Violet. That should have been my clue. Violet eyes.

I should've paid more attention to our hands. She's clawing at me and I'm slapping at her, when my palm makes contact with the back of her left hand. It's like smacking a mosquito, the way it squashes underneath your palm. Then, you examine its blood and your blood on your skin only there's shards of purple glass shoved through your hand, one even sticks out the front and back of your palm and some twist the fingernails up and off of your fingers, and your best friend is leaning all her weight on you and you don't comprehend at first until…"Oh my god."

Shaking, "Oh my god." All you can say when you realize that you just killed your best friend. You just crushed a magical girl's soul gem and now she's dead. "Oh my god."

"Would you like to meet the resistance now?" the cat asks. "I can lead the way." I wait until I stop shaking before pushing Homura off of me. I don't look back as I follow the cat.


	10. 1

We're back to where we started. The bus stop. The bench sags under my butt. It creaks every time I shuffle. I stare at the glass in my hands. One red, one purple. The Clara Dolls are hiding in the shadows. I can hear them giggling, see flashes of their eyes, but I don't know where they're at. "Madoka, look," the cat orders, but I don't know where he wants me to look. His tail points to the sky before curling into a question mark. "Up." I tilt my head back, but nothings wrong. Nothings up there.

"It's these streetlights," the cat complains. "They pollute. Here." It swishes its tail and the streetlights collapse, toppling one by one like dominos. The bulbs burst as they smack against the pavement. "There." And now I can see. The sky is translucent. Images flick around on the other side.

"What's going on?" I can only see movement, can't make out any shapes. "What is that?"

"You would've been able to see better outside of the city, but Madoka that's you. That's the real you."

I squint my eyes.

"Madoka, this a dream." I stand up.

"You've repeated this dream thousands of times, thousands of different ways, but each time its the same. One of your friends is in trouble, become magical girl, save them."

I can make out the black shape.

"Only you never do. Sayaka, Kyoko, Mami, Homura. Puppets that you loose every time."

And suddenly I remember.

"But you can keep trying."

Everything.

"You get as many redos as you want."

Madoka Kanae was…

"Would you like to try and save someone else this time?"

A magical girl.

"Would you like to save someone you don't even know?"

But now she was…

"Do you want to save them all?"

A witch.


	11. End Game-Play Again?

Dead silence. Why should anything make a sound? None of it was real. The sky collapses around us, falling in thick chunks. They pound against the ground, making it shake, but no noise. I can't even hear the breathing. The Clara Doll's mouths open in pantomimed screams as they get crushed underneath the sky. I stand on my tiptoes, reaching up. I grab a jagged edge from the sky and pull myself up through the hole.

Wind screams in my ears when my head pops free. The ribbons in my hair come untied. They get sucked into the void. My hair whips around, lashing against my face, stinging. I catch a glimpse of 'myself' before I have to close my eyes to protect them from my hair. "That's me," I feel my lips move, the vibrations underneath the skin of my neck, but if I can't hear myself talk and no one's around to listen am I even making a sound? "I'm a monster."

The chunk of sky I grasp in my hands breaks. I'm falling back down, out of reality and into the dream. "Everything I worked so hard for was for nothing. I gave up my whole life, my family, everything for this. It's not fair. I want out of here, I want to go home and see my family, my real friends. I haven't seen them in so long. I bet they're worried so please just let me go home. Please let me go home. This isn't what I asked for," I whimper. Then I crash. It doesn't hurt. I lay on my back, watching as my world crumbles around me.

"Sorry," the cat purrs, Kyuuby's stand-in for this make-believe dreamscape. "I can't do that. I can give you another chance." I don't say anything.

"You didn't do so well this round," the cat eventually says. My muscles tense at the sudden intrusion of sound, but I don't jump. "Both Mami and Homura, dead. Sayaka, a murderous magical girl. Probably dead. And Kyoko…" the cat pauses.

"What happened to Kyoko?" I ask.

"She wondered off the edge into the off limits zone. I can only make this place so big. Anything past that point stops existing."

"Great," I sigh.

"So who do you want to save this time?" the cat asks. It starts to groom itself. "Take as long as you need to, but try to hurry. This place is about used up."

"Myself." My voice is so low it crackles around the edges.

"That's a first," the cat says, excited. "How would you like to go about that Madoka? I'm here to serve. I want what's best for you. After all, I'm just an extension of you. Everything here is all a part of you."

"I will save myself by saving all of them, I don't care how long it takes. I need to save them all. I lost everyone this time. Next time, I'll get all of them. Another chance! Please, another chance to bring them back!"

"Okay," the cat sounds disappointed and I know I failed the test. "Take as long as you need."

"There will be one world where I can save them all," I whisper to myself. I look up and watch myself, destroying and consuming. Suddenly, I'm tired. So, so very tired. "Until then…"

"Restart."


End file.
